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Transcript 225A
The Relationship Between Jesus and John the Baptist
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: You know the words, "Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world," were spoken by John the Baptist, when he saw Jesus coming to be baptized?
HC: Yes
CALLER: It brought to mind something that I had thought about earlier. It's probably not a very important problem, but it's interesting to me. The scriptures seem to reflect almost a stranger's meeting there. And yet John and Jesus were born, on Jesus' human side anyway, as relatives. Mary and the mother of John the Baptist were cousins. And I know there are some fine paintings (I don't know if they were painted by Christians, or if they reflect scriptural truth) which show Jesus and John together as babies. And so I have always grown up believing that they knew each other as children. And yet I find that in the scriptures they are meeting as grown men now, doing the work of God in Heaven. And they meet almost as strangers.
And later on, after John is being persecuted, he said to Jesus, "Are you the one that we've been waiting for, or should we look for another?" almost as if some doubt has come into his mind. And I wondered if you would talk about what the Bible might teach us about their relationship as human beings.
HC: All right. Fine. The question that is raised is, what was the real relationship of John the Baptist to Jesus? Just how intimately did they know each other? Now first of all, we know that they were cousins. That we know from the Bible. And we also know that John the Baptist was six months older than Jesus.
Secondly, we know that Jesus grew up in Nazareth. And John the Baptist grew up, not in Nazareth, but in another town somewhere, which probably could have been two or three days journey at least from Nazareth.
CALLER: When Gabriel announced to Mary that Elizabeth was already six months pregnant, she immediately (I believe the Bible says immediately, anyway) went to be with her. And I think the language that the Bible uses is that she made a journey. That doesn't sound like it was just down the block. It sounds . . . I believe it was to the hills, or . . .
HC: "In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a city of Judah."
CALLER: So it must have been some ways out.
HC: Yes. And we must bear in mind that you couldn't get in your car and drive for a half hour and get there, you know. But the odds are that at least once a year, at least occasionally, when they went to celebrate the Passover Feast, John the Baptist would have met his cousin Jesus. I think that they probably at least had some acquaintance with each other. This is speculation, though.
Incidentally, the pictures that you see have no substance in truth at all. They are simply the speculation of artists.
CALLER: Although a painting doesn't necessarily reflect something in scripture, I have seen some paintings and heard some hymns, and so on, that do reflect scriptural truth. You know what I mean?
HC: Yes.
CALLER: Even though it's not, for instance, an illustration of a story that's actually written down. And I wondered about those. I wondered about those paintings.
HC: But now there's another factor here. You know, when we study John the Baptist, we find that he was what we would call an ''oddball" today, because where did he spend his time, as he grew up?
CALLER: I believe, when he was grown, or nearly grown, he went into the desert.
HC: Yes. He was in the wilderness.
CALLER: He wasn't at home with his parents. And more than that, remember Jesus spoke of John the Baptist, that he did not come eating and drinking, whereas the Son of Man came eating and drinking.
In other words, John the Baptist was not sociable at all. He lived almost like an outcast, like a hermit. Jesus, on the other hand, lived just a very normal life, more of a gregarious life, with people. And so the likelihood is that John the Baptist went his own way, to a very high degree.
Now when Jesus met John the Baptist at the River Jordan, when Jesus was baptized, both had become grown men. And there's a good likelihood that John the Baptist may not have even recognized Jesus immediately in the flesh, except for the inspiration that God would give him.
CALLER: I believe that's so, that when John the Baptist saw Jesus and spoke those words, he was speaking words that . . .
HC: That God the Holy Spirit was giving to him.
CALLER: And the utterance came from direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
HC: Yes. I feel certain about that. Now later on, when John the Baptist was in prison, that was a different matter, when he said, "Are you the one who is to come?" Here we have the problem of a born again believer (because John the Baptist certainly was) who had an incomplete knowledge of what salvation is, and now momentarily his faith is faltering.
You see, the mind of the Jew of that day was looking for a Messiah who would be an earthly Messiah, a King who would rule in Jerusalem. And so I'm sure that John the Baptist had received lots of suggestion in his own mind along this line. And he was tremendously excited when he baptized Jesus, when the heavens opened and he heard the words, "This is My beloved Son. Hear ye Him," and so on.
And then he begins to hear that Jesus is beginning to teach. But the next thing that happens is that John the Baptist is in jail. Now that's a terribly bad thing. Here he's in jail, and the Messiah is out there, who could free him in an instant. And nothing's happening. He's rotting away in jail.
And so pretty soon he begins to wonder, is He really the Messiah? And then Jesus of course sends word back to him, "The dead are being raised, the lame are walking, and the eyes of the blind are being opened." This is what Isaiah prophesied. And these were all figures of the kind of salvation that Christ was beginning to offer.
The more I study the Word on this (and we have to speculate, of course), I do not believe that Jesus and John the Baptist, even though they were cousins, knew each other at all very well. I'm sure that Elizabeth told John the Baptist about Jesus many times.
CALLER: Oh, I'm sure, too, just because I'm a mother, and I know that her excitement in having a baby in old age must have been marvellous. And then the experience that she had when Mary approached her home, Mary of course already bearing the Lord Jesus in her body. And Elizabeth's baby jumped with joy, so to speak. And I'm sure that that experience, and that kindness that Mary did to her, to help her during the last months of her expecting time, must have made a wonderful impression on her, as a person.
But John's doubting words to Jesus, "Are you the one after all, or should we wait for another?" has always touched me, since I've become a believer, especially in the light of Jesus' reaction to the news when John had been beheaded. I had never really seen it before. When the disciples had told Jesus that John had indeed been killed, Jesus went out to be alone. And the scripture vocabulary is so simple, and so quiet. And yet to me it pictures a moment of great impact in Jesus' feelings. This seemed to be almost the kind of reaction that He had when Lazarus died. And Lazarus was His friend.
HC: Well, thank you for sharing your thoughts. I do appreciate it.
CALLER: Thank you very much. Good night.
HC: Good night.